Week 6 - Public Health Firsthand

From the several public health classes I have taken, I have heard and read about what goes into a public health project, and this week I got to see what such a project looks like firsthand. Below are a few of the lessons that I saw put into action.

Lesson 1: Choosing a project that is relevant to the specific community

Many people in Mulabana use water from Lake Victoria and a small pond for drinking, cooking, and bathing water. Often these people become sick after using this water because it is highly contaminated. As Joel and several community members explained, fecal matter from shallow pit latrines and from defecation in places other than latrines ends up in the lake and pond, especially after it rains. Because they do not have a source for safe drinking, cooking, and bathing water, the installation of a water line to the community was a relevant project for the people of Mulabana.

Lesson 2: Community involvement

Much of the groundwork for the project had been done ahead of time by Joel. He was responsible for getting the proper approvals and speaking with the community about the project. He came to Mulabana at least five times to make sure that the people of the village were informed and invested in the project.

Lesson 3: Sustainability

By involving the community members in the project from the beginning, Joel ensured that they would take ownership of the project. This ownership would lead to the ready use and maintenance of the water system. The people receiving water understood that there would be a small fee for getting water from the tap and that this small fee would be used to pay for the treatment process. Furthermore, the community members dug the trench for the new pipe and agreed to become caretakers of the pump. It was important that they did not just see the water as simply a gift.

Overall, working on this project was quite rewarding. It was truly amazing to see water flowing after working on the project for just three days. Of course, Joel has been working on the project for much longer, and I know this is what made everything possible. I really hope that the people in Mulabana use the clean water and maintain the system.

Location: Mulabana, Kalagala District, Ssese Islands

Week 6- Sustainability

Each year our program does a community service project in Kalangala, an island that’s a part of the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria.  For the first two years of the program we helped build pit latrines in two different communities where there were few or no pit latrines previously.  This year we worked on a project extending the line of clean water further into the island.  My initial excitement for the project was somewhat quelled when I found out that we were adding a water tap in a place where there had already been a tap.  Robert, our engineer assisting us on the project, explained that each community that received a tap would need to pay a small fee for each jerry can of water.  Apparently, the community we worked with previously had a tap but refused to pay for the water once the initial free-trial period of six months was over. So, the company took out the tap.
    We were now adding back a tap and extending the line further into the center of the island.  While I was excited about getting our hands dirty and doing some real public health work, the idea of sustainability lingered in the back of my mind. Would a community that already once refused to pay for the water now agree to pay? When a new group of NU students comes next year will our project still be operating?  I hope so.  There are signs that it will succeed and signs that it will fail.  Joel, a well respected member of the community, worked on this project to convince the community that it was a worthwhile venture.  He sensitized the villagers, a tactic that might not have previously been successful.  However, we still saw very few villagers assisting us on the project.  We were repeatedly told by several people that more villagers should be helping with the project. So why weren’t they there?
    My fear was and still is that they are not that interested in the water taps.  I wondered if a pit latrine would have been a better investment or would have drawn better community involvement.  How did we decide to work on this project rather than build another pit latrine as the other two groups did?  It’s unclear but I hope that this was not a case of foreigners pushing an agenda on a local people. Water sanitation is a “hot topic” in global health and the office that sponsors our program has made it clear through a variety of new programs that they are interested in water sanitation.  It’s definitely an important topic as we saw the awful, contaminated water source that those villagers were using. However, I wonder if we pushed our agenda of focusing on water sanitation too much at the detriment of providing a product that would actually be accepted by the people in Kalangala.